Lawrence P. Schnapf is an environmental attorney based in New York City and New Jersey with over 40 years of national environmental transactional experience and is the principal of Schnapf LLC. With this background and his geology training, Larry is uniquely qualified to handle the legal and technical issues commonly encountered with environmental issues.
Larry primarily concentrates on environmental risks associated with corporate, real estate and brownfield transactions; commercial financing including asset-based lending, syndicated loans, mezzanine loans and distressed debt; bankruptcy, workouts and corporate restructuring. He has extensive experience with brownfield redevelopment and financing, including representing affordable housing developers and assisting local development corporations or not-for-profit organizations with their brownfield planning programs. Larry also counsels clients on environmental, represents clients in federal and state environmental litigation, enforcement actions, administrative proceedings and private cost recovery actions. He has also served as liaison counsel for PRP steering committees.
He has also written numerous articles on environmental law, is the general editor/contributing author of “Environmental Issues in Business Transactions” published by the Business Law Section of the ABA and is also the author of “Managing Environmental Liability in Transactions and Brownfield Redevelopment” published by JurisLaw Publishing. He is also contributing author for several chapters of “Brownfield Practice and Law: The Cleanup and Redevelopment of Contaminated Properties” published by Matthew Bender and the Matthew Bender “Environmental Law Practice Guide”.
Larry is a past Chair of the Environmental Law Section of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA), co-chair of the NYSBA brownfield task force and served as the co-chair of the NYSBA Hazardous Site Remediation Committee from 1995 until January 2015 he became an officer of the NYSBA Environmental Law Section. Larry is an emeritus board member of the New York Brownfield Partnership and the Brownfield Coalition of the Northeast (BCONE). Larry served as the chair of the Brownfield Field Task Force of the Environmental Business Association of New York (EBA/NYS) from 2002 until EBA/NYS became inactive in 2009.
He is a past Chair of the ABA Section of Business Law Committee on Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law and a vice chair of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources.
Larry has also served on a number of ASTM Task Groups, including Chair of the legal subcommittee for the ASTM E1527 task force responsible for the 2013 and 2021 revisions to ASTM E1527 phase 1 standard and was Co-Chair of the legal sub-committee for the ASTM Vapor Intrusion Task Group.
Larry is an adjunct professor of environmental law at New York Law School where he teaches “Environmental Law and Policy,” and Brownfield Redevelopment. ” He has also been on the faculty of the Center for Christian Studies at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church where he taught the “The Bible and the Environment.”
He is listed in the New York Super Lawyers-Metro Edition (2010-2024; the Super Lawyers Business Edition (2011-24); The International Who’s Who of Environmental Lawyers (2008-2024) as well as appearing in Chambers USA Client Guide of America’s Leading Lawyers for Business. Larry has received the AV® Preeminent Rating from Martindale-Hubbell, the highest possible Peer Review Rating.
His resume is available here: LPS resume